Accepting PhD Students

PhD projects

Zac is interested in supervising doctoral researchers in the following areas:

design, construction, inspection, operation and maintenance of civil and rail infrastructure system
train/track interface and interaction
railway and permanent way engineering; structural dynamics, reliability and resilience
shock/blast and impact
transportation systems
risks, economics, strategy, systems and urbanisation

Background:
A positive and self-motivated technical manager and specialist with extensive experience across civil, transport, and rail industry in public and private sectors. Expertise in transport infrastructure engineering and management, successfully dealing with all stages of infrastructure life cycle and assuring safety, reliability, resilience and sustainability of rail infrastructure systems. Highly skills in business management and continuous improvement of customer experience. Zac is a chartered engineer, has over 260 technical publications and held a visiting position in various institutions including Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Chalmers University of Technology, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, University of Tokyo, and Railway Technical Research Institute.

Dr Kaewunruen has extensive experience in the field of structural, civil and railway track engineering both in industry and in academia. With over decades in industry and regulatory environments, he has wide variety of specialisations, including rail engineering, track engineering, track components, structural and geotechnical engineering, maintenance and construction. He has research and practical experience internationally in railway systems and infrastructure engineering. His work has involved many industry projects worth over £5b and supervised/participated in railway research projects worth over £8m (in Australia, UK, Japan, USA, Sweden, China, Malaysia and Thailand). He published significantly in this field in terms of both academic work and evidenced-based governmental/authoritative technical reports. He has membership in EU-Cost Actions: TU1404 (Towards the next generation of standards for service life of cement-based materials and structures), CA15125 (Designs for noise reducing materials and structures), CA15202 (Self-healing as preventive repair of concrete structures) and TU1409 (Mathematics for Industry Network). Zac is a member of ISO and BSI standard committees for railway sleepers and recycling of rolling stocks. He successfully coordinates EU-funded RISEN (www.risen2rail.eu). He is also a committee member of Concrete Society West Midlands and is Chief Editor of Frontiers in Transportation and Transit Systems.

http://loop.frontiersin.org/people/157523